


To Be Seen Truly

by DreamerInSilico



Series: The Names We're Given [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-12
Updated: 2014-12-12
Packaged: 2018-03-01 03:45:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2758355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamerInSilico/pseuds/DreamerInSilico
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ilya Lavellan is troubled by the humans’ insistence that she is the Herald of Andraste, and seeks temporary respite from their expectations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Be Seen Truly

**Author's Note:**

> Solas/Lavellan early relationship, no major plot spoilers. Part of The Names We're Given continuity.

There was fresh snow on the ground at Haven, but one wouldn’t know it by the sight - the steady trickle of refugees and new recruits for the Inquisition had already churned its pristine white to a half-frozen muck that squelched under Ilya’s boots as she strode away from a very uncomfortable conversation with the priest, Mother Giselle.  Frown creasing her forehead, she wandered past the periphery of the town’s buildings and recent plethora of tents, seeking out higher, more treacherous slopes that did not bear the scars of playing host to a war camp… and ironically, perhaps, a haven from the town itself.  From the people gathered there who venerated her for a presumed connection to a god she had no cause to believe in.  

As she put Haven’s mud behind her, icy wind whipped about unhindered by stone walls, flinging powdery snow up to catch the sunlight and glitter as it fell, and Ilya’s frown eased slightly, the wind seeming to snatch some small part of her tension and carry it away with the snow.  

That tension returned almost immediately, however, when wilderness-tuned senses informed her that she was being followed by someone very quiet.  

Ilya paused at a boulder and turned, putting her back to it, the alert easing again as quickly as it had risen as she caught sight of her pursuer and waited for him to reach her.  Solas met her gaze and stopped a respectful distance away, head tilting slightly in implied question.  “Lethallan.  I do not wish to intrude, if it is solitude you seek.”

With a smirk and a shake of her head, she gestured to the boulder to invite him to join her in looking out over the slopes before them.  “As long as you haven’t suddenly gone Andrastian on me and come to pay homage to the Herald, or some such nonsense, I’d welcome your company.”

“Ahh.”  Solas chuckled quietly and closed the distance to the boulder, leaning against its sun-warmed roughness as she had done.  “However many perils beset us, that, at least, is one you need not fear.”

Ilya’s eyes flicked away from his face, surveying the town below with rueful weariness.  “What do you think this place might look like in the Fade, someday?” she asked on the heels of a sigh.  “I… have been practicing what we spoke of, and I’ve seen glimpses of a cult, and the dragon they called the ‘risen Andraste.’”  

She was not looking to see his face light up with appreciation, but it was audible in his voice all the same, and the sound warmed her.  “Have you?  You are a quick study - not that I expected otherwise.  As for the future…”  His smooth, modulated baritone grew thoughtful, and a moment more passed with only the sound of the wind through sparse trees, and the distant, more human noises of Haven, as he considered.  “I would expect to see the imprint of a great deal of hope.  Desperate hope, perhaps, but that is the most potent sort.”  

“Will it remember what I actually am, do you think?” she mused, an edge of bitterness limning her words.  “Or will I become some flowing-haired human with a sunburst circlet and an enormous sword at my side?”

“It troubles you, that they see you as the chosen of their faith,” he observed simply, quietly.  

Ilya sighed and shifted to face him once more, leaning elbow and forearm against the stone.  A sunless crevice beneath her ungloved hand was almost startlingly cold after the relative warmth of the rock’s main face, and she realized it was slicked with ice.  

“It does.  Creators, Solas - their Chantry-bound world has had its neat little boxes smashed with the contents all askew, and they still manage to think an Elvhen mage is someone their god sent to save them?”  

A small smirk played at the corners of his lips, and his eyes were curious but otherwise opaque.  “Well, their boxes are, as you point out, very askew.  What would you do in their stead, do you think?  What would you believe?”  

“I’d believe the world needed fixing and be glad it looked like someone just might be able to manage it,” she answered with a snort.  “And perhaps worry how the gods did or didn’t play into it after the sky was healed.”

“I doubt it’s necessary to point out that your pragmatic viewpoint is not a common one,” Solas replied, smirk deepening, and drawing a slight laugh from Ilya.  

“No, it isn’t.  I… “  She huffed out the breath, shaking her head and scattering a few errant flakes of snow that had erstwhile been invisible in her short hair.  “I understand the power of symbols and figureheads when I’m not being petulant about it, truly.  It’s only that I wish it wasn’t something so…”

“...far-distant from what you truly are,” he finished quietly, azure eyes serious, when she trailed off.  “I understand that wish, lethallan.”

And though he did not elaborate, Ilya could feel the truth in that statement like the brush of wind-flung snow on her face, or the slow seep of winter into her bones.

 

 


End file.
